Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 11

Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 10  (13+) In which the boys enjoy the hospitality of the King of Midwestern Weed. #1851105 by Ben Simon

11.

    I was kind of uneasy sitting in the back of that cop car no matter how comforting that cop tried to be to me, but mostly I was just dead tired.  I hadn’t realized it before, not even when I was sitting on that couch watching the boring news, but I felt like all the energy I ever had just left my body.  Of course, when I was sitting in the apartment I hadn’t just run the length of town, neither had I just cried myself a fit, and maybe that was why I felt so wiped out.  I heard the cop talking into his walkie-talkie saying whatever it is that cops say into those things, but it was kind of in another world and I could feel myself drifting off.

    “You’re lucky that Alois Mendenhall called us worried sick about what had happened to you kids,” the cop was saying after he got off his radio.  “We’ve been all day looking for you guys.  We called the police department down there in Garen and found out that your parents had called you boys in missing last night but they hadn’t really done anything about it, being that they usually wait 48 hours before responding to a missing persons’ report.  We probably wouldn’t have done anything if Mendenhall’s description didn’t match the one that your parents gave so much.  We found your buddy in the middle of town a little while ago looking a little dazed and he told us he thought you headed this direction.  Good thing or we might’ve been all night looking for you.”

    Something else came in over the radio and the cop started talking into it, by that time we were pulling into the police station.  It was one of those small town police stations that were probably built sometime in the twenties or thirties with a one-room station on one side and one of those small, cozy holding jails that was probably good for three or four prisoners.  The cop opened the car door for me and, as good as that back seat had started to feel to me, I didn’t really want to get out but I managed to anyway. 

    We walked up a small flight of stairs and the cop radioed someone inside and you heard a click on the heavy metal door and the cop opened it, and inside there was another couple of heavy doors, one leading to the station and the other presumably leading to the jail.  A soft buzz came from the right hand door and then a click and the cop opened the door to the station’s main room, and there, sitting on a wood bench that looked sort of like a church pew, was my mom and Pill.

    My mom was never known to be the emotional type.  From the time dad died she had to be everything in the family so I guess she figured she’d have to be a rock and not let anything get to her, you know, for the sake of me and Derek and Pill.  I don’t remember that much before dad died so I don’t know whether she was that unemotional before then or if she became that way after his death.  All I know is that she didn’t get really emotional when Derek was drafted and she never really showed any emotion when Pill decided to drop out of school just after her seventeenth birthday and then just virtually disappear out of our lives, only coming back from time to time when she got into really bad money trouble.  About twelve years after we were standing in that police station in Jennings, during the terrible fall of ’88 when she was laying on her bed dying of stomach cancer, she was the one who comforted Derek and got him to hold himself together.  The only time in my life I ever really saw her cry was when she saw me walk through that door, and then she really started bawling.  She and Pill jumped off that bench and grabbed me up and hugged me, though I don’t know how genuine Pill was being.  All I know is that she was crying and Pill was crying and even though I was crying, too, I couldn’t help thinking how weird this all was.

    The cop came up behind mom and touched her on the shoulder, saying, “Ma’am, we’re going to have to talk to the boy for just a moment.  We’ll try to get you guys out of here as soon as possible.”

    Mom eased up a little bit and the cop motioned for me to follow him to a desk.  Out of the corner of my eye I caught Toadstool sitting with his mom and dad on a bench across the way from where mom had been sitting, Toadstool’s mom caressing his back as gently as if he was a newborn puppy.  I glanced at Toadstool for a moment and he gave me the queerest look, like he wanted to tell me something but couldn’t.  That freaked me out a little bit and when I sat down at the desk with the cop I was facing Toadstool and he still looked at me like he was trying to communicate something to me with his eyes and hoping our moms wouldn’t catch on.

    “You win some and you lose some, don’t you, eh, Glenn?” the chubby, gray-haired dispatcher asked as the cop sat down at his desk.

    “I would consider this a win, yes, we find both boys alive and they seem to be in decent health.  I suppose that you’re talking about the Davis boy.”

    “The Davis boy?  I thought he was your best friend.”

    “He’s a loss, that’s what he is.  He had a lot of potential, it’s just too bad.  Is Neal still over there?”

    “He’s going to be over there for a long time.  Probably needs you to head over there, too, after you’re done here.  Don’t know why we bother, though.  Nobody’s going to miss a junkie like him.”

    The cop, whose name tag I noticed read “Calloway,” shot a look at the dispatcher but then turned his attention to some papers on his desk.

    “We’ve already got most of the story from your buddy,” the cop said.  “We just need to see if there are any details you need to add.  Now, this fella, um, Gerd Franklin, right?”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “From what the other boy told me he forced you boys into his car and drove you all the way up there, is that right?”

    I took a quick glance at Toadstool, who was now looking at me with as desperate a look as he could muster with his mom sitting right next to him.

    “Yeah. . .yeah, that’s right,” I said.

    “And when he got all the way here he basically sold you boys to a nearby farmer.  We’ve already seen the bruises on the other boy so we know what he went through.  Did they injure you in any way?”

    “No,. . . I mean, not as bad as they did Toa. . . I mean, Joey.”

    “The story would be hard to believe if it wasn’t for the marks all over that boy’s body.  Now, can you give me the name of the farmer?”

    “No, I. . . I mean, I didn’t get any last names.  It was this old farmer and his wife who had a farm by the railroad tracks and they had a son named Tommy. . .”

    The cop shook his head and turned back towards my mom.  “It’s going to be hard to find out who did this.  Alois Mendenhall said he drove the boys a good five miles after he picked them up on that county road.  We can take them back there and they might be able to point out where they came out, but there could be literally dozens of farms in the area and if we do find someone that fits the description,  it all basically comes down to their word against you boys, no matter the injuries that the boy has. “

    “Well, what about the Franklin boy?” mom asked.  “Certainly there’s something you can do about him.”

    “That’s out of our jurisdiction, ma’am.  All we can do is pass information along to the Garen police department, but I doubt we can do anything beyond what you could do in person other than to verify the boys’ wounds.  But we’ll try to help you out as best we can.”

    I looked back over at Toadstool and I hoped that no one noticed the smile that had crept up on my face.  He wasn’t looking at me anymore; he was just staring at the floor and taking in all the attention his mom and dad were giving him.  To tell you the truth I was really impressed.  Not only had he come up with a lie that had gotten both him and me off the hook for being so stupid but he’d also come up with a way to get even with Gerd Franklin and maybe even those farmboys, because even if the cops could never do anything against them I’m pretty sure they’d be feeling the heat for the next few months.  My only regret was that I couldn’t find a way to throw Nettie Schallert’s dad into the mix.  Other than that, I couldn’t have made up a better lie myself.

    “At least this is a happy end to the day,” the cop was saying as me and Toadstool’s parents signed some release forms as we were getting ready to leave.  “This has been one of the craziest days this town has seen for a long time.  Had our first homicide in eight years, a pusher who I guess made a bad deal.  Then, earlier, someone steals this gal’s car and wrecks it into a tree.”

    “Terri Bensley wrecked that car herself and you know it,” the dispatcher said.  “How many times has she been in a wreck in the last three or four years?”

    “Yeah, well there’s no proof of that, is there?  Sometimes you’ve got to investigate them anyway, no matter what you may ‘know.’  Anyway, all this on a Sunday.  Makes me think that God owes us quiet for the rest of the month.”

    Our parents spent literally twenty minutes thanking that cop for all he’d done and the entire time my mom had her hand squeezing my right shoulder and, for good measure, Pill squeezed my left.  When we finally got out of the station the sun had set and even with mom and Pill still huddled around me I started to feel tired again.  Toadstool’s mom had driven their station wagon up there and Toadstool climbed in front between his mom, who drove, and his dad while I climbed in back and sat between mom and Pill.  Toadstool’s mom mentioned something about getting some food somewhere and mom thought it might be a good idea but, to be truthful, I wasn’t hungry, just really tired and in want of some sleep.  I involuntarily leaned in towards mom, something I’d probably never do under normal circumstances, but she put her arm around me and, to be truthful, she felt warm and soft and I didn’t really see any reason to move away from her.  It took Toadstool’s mom about ten or fifteen minutes to get out of Jennings and out on the open highway and when she did that was it for me.  I don’t remember any of the ride from Jennings to Garen and I don’t remember dreaming at all, for the next hour or so that it took to get back into town I pretty much didn’t exist.

    Finally I felt my mom shaking me and something in my sub-conscious realized that I had made it back to our house.  I was too big for my mom to carry out so she made me get up, but all I can remember is the vague lights of the street lamps and mom saying something about calling Toadstool’s mom the next day so that they could talk to the police.  At some point afterwards I climbed the stairs to my house and went in, and as much as I don’t remember this, I must’ve put on my pajamas before I crawled into bed because I remember waking up in them.  All I know for sure was that, for the first time in three days, I was sleeping in my own very comfortable bed.



    The next week was the last week before school started and it was a really busy one for me.  I talked to cops, the state’s attorney and one reporter from the Garen Town Register about what had happened.  I had to call Toadstool more than once to make sure that we got our story straight.  We eventually filed a restraining order against Gerd Franklin, both for me and Toadstool, but that didn’t stop me or my mom from worrying anyway.  For my part I knew that Gerd would be pretty ticked off because of the lie we told though the jerk deserved it for leaving us in Guardian like that.  Anyway, mom didn’t let me out of the house that entire week unless she was with me and, for my part, I had no trouble with that. 

    The story came out in the paper that Thursday and when school started the following Monday me and Toadstool were instant celebrities, even with the upper classmen.  We had to retell the story dozens of times not just to the other kids but also to teachers, janitors, lunch ladies and anybody else who had heard the story.  Toadstool was reluctant to repeat himself after a while but me, I live for attention so I’d talk about it to whoever would ask me about it, especially if it was somebody like Becky McGlothlin or Leslie Menke.  Of course, with the adults we had to stick with the official story about how Gerd had kidnapped us and tried to sell us to that farmer but with the students, especially when everyone started getting bored with the story, I started to tell a little more of the truth about what happened.  I guess that’s part of the reason the story’s gotten so messed up over the years.  About the time the boys’ basketball team started making their run at the state tournament was when everybody got really bored with our story and that’s when me and Toadstool disappeared into the crowd again, although all through high school and ever since the whole thing comes up again from time to time.

    When everything was said and done, the fact was that our case against Gerd Franklin was about the same as what that cop in Jennings had said that our case against the farmboys was; our word against his.  Toadstool had the bruises to prove that he’d been through something but the only people who’d even witnessed the three of us together were Bobby File and Chelsea Fink and her cousin and Bobby wasn’t saying anything and Chelsea and her cousin couldn’t even be found.  It didn’t really matter, though, because after that everything went bad for Gerd and his dad.  Old Joseph Granger got ahold of a copy of the hometown paper and found out what had happened and decided to return home to maybe do a little investigating of his own.  What he found was how little work that Will Franklin had put into the place and how much he’d let the house go to seed.  Now, I don’t think old man Granger cared about that house as much as he cared about the fact that he was the guy who had allowed those two degenerates to stay in Garen so he had both of them kicked out as quickly as he could, even brought the cops there to help him do it.  Word was that Gerd and his dad left the state, though nobody really knows for sure and nobody really cared.  In the mid-nineties I was doing some running up north, though, and out of boredom I picked up a paper from this small town outside of Bloomington and I caught the name of Gerd Franklin in one of the obituaries.  That would be a huge coincidence, I know, but honestly, how many people out there in Illinois would have a name like that?

    Me and Toadstool stayed pretty close throughout our freshman year in high school, or at least we hang out together as much as we ever did.  We never really did talk that much about that weekend in Jennings except when he asked me why I kept bringing it up to other people so much.  Then, towards the end of that freshman year I started dating Sherry Ann for the first time and she held most of my attention throughout the entire summer of ’77.  In the meantime the school’s counselors had a little meeting with Toadstool’s mom and let her know that if Toadstool pressed himself a little harder that not only could he graduate at the top of his class, but, with summer classes, he might be able to graduate a year early.  Well, that’s all his mom needed to start cracking the whip and while the rest of us were running around at the movies or the county fair he was hard at work in a Garen High classroom.  After that he was always knee deep in schoolwork and I was occupied by Sherry Ann and her bunch and me and Toadstool pretty much stopped having anything to do with one another.

    The plans of his mom and those counselors worked out pretty good for Toadstool because not only did he graduate a year early in the spring of ’79 but he did so good that he got a dresser drawer full of scholarships to go to college, or so I heard.  So while the rest of us were ruling the school in our senior year at Garen High, Toadstool was up in Edwardsville going through his first year of college.  Over summer break he took an internship at the First Municipal Bank of Garen and old man Haller, who was bank president at the time, liked Toadstool’s ability with numbers so much that he hired him on for real every summer until Toadstool got his master’s degree, at which point Toadstool automatically had a junior position there at the bank.  That was pretty good considering that he was the only executive in that entire bank who didn’t have the last name Haller.

    It’s been over three decades and over that time different Hallers have become bank presidents and chairmen but, from what I’ve heard from some fairly reliable sources, they’ve all come to rely pretty heavily on Toadstool.  He’s never had kids, never gotten married and I don’t think he sees any reason to.  I’m not sure what he does for fun anymore, like I said, I hardly ever see him and when I do all we say is “hi.”  Of course, nobody calls him Toadstool anymore.  A few years after he got his master’s I saw the nametag on his door and it read “Joseph Barnes,” then a few years later it read “Joseph P. Barnes” and some time later I saw one that read his full name, “Joseph Phillip Barnes,” and finally, about ten years ago or so, I was in the bank and I saw that his nameplate read “J. Phillip Barnes.”  And that was the last time I ever set foot in the First Municipal Bank of Garen, IL.

    One more thing about old Toadstool.  Remember that girl that gave him that name in the first place, Becky McGlothlin?  Well, it was probably a good thing that she treated him so nicely while they were in high school.  She ended up marrying Phil Peterson, the Mr. All-Everything jock of Garen high school not too long after graduation.  It was the type of marriage made in high school heaven but which really belonged someplace else.  Turns out that, once you’re out in the real world, after a few years nobody’s really that impressed about how many rebounds you got per game throughout your high school career or how you held the school record in the discus.  It seems that Phil didn’t really have any job skills and didn’t have the desire to obtain any and, in the meantime, he has poor Becky pregnant almost immediately.  Then, a couple of years later, Phil just gets bored with everything and takes off to God knows where, leaving Becky with a kid and no education beyond high school.  She would’ve been completely screwed if it wasn’t for Toadstool, who somehow got wind of her condition and used his position not only to get her on at the bank but to get the bank to agree to send her to school as well.  Last I heard she was one of the top loan officers there.  Just goes to show you, I guess.

    Just about everyone knows what I’m doing these days and if you don’t, you’d probably never believe me if I told you so let’s just leave it at that.  I don’t lie so much anymore, maybe occasionally when Sherry Ann asks me how she looks in one of those outfits from Wal-mart, but she caught me in a couple of big ones a long time ago and pretty much cured me of my fibbing problem.  Losing her is not worth the best story I could come up with, no matter how good it is.

    So that’s it, everything about that weekend written down so that, at least, no one can dispute my version of it.  If Toadstool, or Joseph or J. Phillip or whatever he’s calling himself this month, wants to dispute parts of it he can, it’s a free country.  Anyone else who wants to say that it’s wrong, well, they didn’t live it, we did, so I don’t know where they’d be coming from.  I don’t really think about that weekend very much at all anymore, only when somebody brings it up in conversation, and then I’ve almost always had to correct something in the story.  Like everything else I go through, the best thing I can say for the whole ordeal is that I survived it.